Black History Month will bring a special celebration of Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel laureate, playwright, and political activist, who studied at the University of Leeds. To honour his 90th birthday, the School will host a series of workshops facilitated by Nigerian professional actors and supported by the School
Date:Wednesday 30 October 2024
Venue: stage@leeds
Time 10.45am – 1.30pm
A SYMPOSIUM focussing on Wole Soyinka as a literary and political figure will be staged on Wednesday, October 30 at the University of Leeds, where the Nobel laureate was a student in the early 60s.
Set up as a part of the global celebration of the 90th birthday anniversary of the dramatist, poet, essayist, and human and civil rights activist, the event will “emphasise the multidimensional ways Soyinka’s work has engaged with global issues and politics,” stated the convener Dr Kunle Balogun, dramatist-theatre scholar.
The symposium is also in the context of the Black History Month celebration at the university.
The topic and speakers at the symposium are:
- Chris Dunton: Humanist Ode and other takes on Chibok, a topic ostensibly inspired by Soyinka’s long poem, A Humanist Ode to Chibok Girls.
- James Gibbs: Wole at 90: What have we learned recently about the Nigerian Playwright and Polemicist?
- Lekan Balogun: Reimagining the Canon: Soyinka and Shakespeare in site-specific mode.
- Mojisola Kareem: Staging Soyinka in the UK: Death and the King’s Horseman at The Crucible.
Profiles:
James Gibbs was educated in the UK and the USA, and has taught in the Sudan, Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Belgium, and the UK. He has been interested in Wole Soyinka’s work since he first encountered it as a post-graduate student in Washington DC during 1966/7. In the early 1980s, after several years teaching in different African countries, he wrote a PhD thesis on Soyinka’s early plays for the University of Leeds. In that thesis and since, he has examined several of the many aspects of what he considers a major body of creative and political writing by a significant writer.
Chris Dunton was born in the UK and educated at Oxford University. He has taught at universities in Nigeria, Libya, and South Africa, and was most recently Dean of Humanities and Professor of English at the National University of Lesotho. He is a specialist in African literature and in rhetoric studies applied to African texts.
Mojisola Kareem: An award-winning director, CEO, Creative Director and founder of Utopia Theatre, a leading African Theatre company based in Sheffield, Mojisola began her directing career at York Theatre Royal. Recipient of a 2017 Opera Awards Foundation bursary, a founding member of Mosaic Opera Collective, and currently a guest director at British American Drama Academy and London South Bank University, she creates work that raise awareness and increase appreciation of African culture by commissioning new writing and presenting established classics within a strong African context, and in so doing, aim to dispel stereotypes and encourage authentic voices from the African diaspora.
Lekan Balogun: Award-winning playwright, scholar and theatre director, Lekan Balogun is currently Lecturer in New Writing and Intercultural Performance at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries, He, previously, taught Playwriting, African and Diaspora Theatre, Performance Aesthetics and Dramaturgies of the World in the Department of Creative Arts, University of Lagos, Akoka, Nigeria.
The event is supported by The School of Performance and Cultural Industries (PCI) in collaboration with the Leeds University Centre for African Studies (LUCAS).
Event schedules
10:45: Arrival of Guests
11:05: Start/Welcome speech.
11:15: Introduction of the first speaker and presentation
Title: “Reimagining the Canon: Soyinka and Shakespeare in site-specific mode” by Lekan Balogun
(Q&A follows immediately)
11:35: Introduction of the second speaker/presentation
Title: “Wole at 90: What have we learned recently about the Nigerian Playwright and Polemicist?” by James Gibbs
(Q&A follows immediately)
12:00: Break (Coffee, Tea etc.)
12:15: Introduction of the third speaker/presentation
Title: “Staging Soyinka in the UK: Death and the King’s Horseman at The Crucible” by Mojisola Kareem
(Q&A follows immediately)
12:40: Introduction of the fourth speaker and presentation
Title: “Soyinka’s Humanist Ode and other takes on Chibok” by Chris Dunton
(Q&A follows immediately)
1:10: Responses/Remarks
1:30 End
- Source: https://stage.leeds.ac.uk/events/soyinka-and-the-legacy-of-the-black-history-month/
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Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures celebrates Black History Month
October is Black History Month
THIS October, the University of Leeds’ Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures is proud to celebrate Black History Month with a range of insightful and impactful events that reflect the Faculty’s commitment to diversity, inclusion, and critical engagement with global cultural histories.
From theatre performances to groundbreaking research, students, and staff from across the Faculty will be leading the conversation on race, history, and social justice.
Soyinka@90: Wole Soyinka in focus
Courtesy of organiser Lekan Balogun, Lecturer in New Writing and Intercultural Performance at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries, Black History Month will bring a special celebration of Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel laureate, playwright, and political activist, who studied at the University of Leeds. To honour his 90th birthday, the School will host a series of workshops facilitated by Nigerian professional actors and supported by the School.
The centrepiece of these events is Soyinka in the Eye of Shakespeare, a play that brings together characters from Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, exploring themes of guilt, trauma, and colonial legacies. These performances, paired with script development workshops and sessions on intercultural performance, promise to be a unique learning experience for students.
Additionally, a symposium on Soyinka’s work will take place on 30 October 2024 at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries. Key speakers include Chris Dunton, discussing Soyinka’s ‘Humanist Ode and other takes on Chibok’, and James Gibbs, reflecting on ‘Wole at 90: What have we learned recently about the Nigerian Playwright and Polemicist?’
Books shine light on the lived experiences of LGBTQ communities in Africa 
Meanwhile, two new books shine a light on the lived experiences of LGBTQ communities in Africa. Adriaan van Klinken, Professor of Religion and African Studies at the University of Leeds, and his colleagues have co-authored Stories of Change: Religious Leaders and LGBTIQ Inclusion in East Africa, which tells the powerful life stories of religious leaders in Uganda and Kenya who advocate for the dignity and rights of LGBTIQ people within their communities. Published as an Open Access title, the book is available for free online. Professor Van Klinken’s work forms part of a broader research project that explores progressive African voices championing LGBTIQ inclusion, highlighting the intersection of faith, culture, and human rights.
The book follows the recent publication of Called and Queer: Lived Religion and LGBTQ Methodist Clergy in South Africa, by Dr Megan Robertson (also in the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science). Using a queer lived religion framing, Called and Queer draws on ethnographic research to analyse how six LGBTQ clergy understand and practice their vocation in the Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA). Seemingly marginalised in a denomination which maintains that marriage is only between one man and one woman, this book explores why LGBTQ clergy are motivated to live out their calling in the Church and how they make sense of their positions within it. In doing so, it looks beyond an analysis of a Church based on its official and doctrinal institutional positions on queer people and sexualities and, instead, uncovers the taken-for-granted ways that gender and sex are inscribed in ‘the way we do things around here’.
Listening for race
Dikko Yusuf, a PhD student at the University of Leeds, is leading a groundbreaking research project titled ‘Listening for Race: Reading African Literary Audiobooks.’ Focused on elevating audiobook studies as an academic field, the project proposes a new literary methodology called ‘aural critical theory,’ which combines both written and audio formats to critically analyse African audiobooks. Yusuf’s work addresses the notable absence of African audiobooks on popular platforms and seeks to promote the production and accessibility of these works.
Yusuf’s fascination with audio media stems from his undergraduate days, when podcasts and audiobooks became an integral part of his daily routine. His PhD project, which began as an MA thesis, aims to highlight the ways in which conversations in podcasts engage with grand ideas and how written African literature comes to life through the audiobook medium. To support his research, he plans to record audio components at the University of Leeds’ Helix innovation hub, working closely with co-supervisors Brett Greatley-Hirsch and Brendon Nicholls.
Funded by the AHRC through the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH), the project is expected to be completed in 2027.
Uncoupling heteropatriarchy in African feminism
Professor Tendai Mangena (School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science) researches African feminism. Her British Academy-funded project, Uncoupling Heteropatriarchy in African Feminism, focuses on how unmarried women in Zimbabwe create identities outside the traditional institution of marriage. Mangena’s work sheds light on the ways in which heteropatriarchy dominates in Zimbabwean society and how women resist and navigate these structures.
This pioneering project contributes to the emerging field of Singles Studies in Africa and seeks to elevate the discourse on gender, modernity, and socio-cultural change. Working with Professor Adriaan van Klinken, Professor Mangena will also co-organise a seminar series on feminist and gender discourses, leading up to an international conference in 2026 on Singles Studies: Historical and contemporary discourses in Africa and beyond.
New Blue Plaque on campus celebrates Leeds’ history of anti-slavery and anti-racism
Leeds’ history as a vital location of anti-slavery campaigning has been highlighted with the unveiling of a blue plaque for the University’s Lyddon Hall. Now a student residence, Lyddon Hall was the home of Mary and Wilson Armistead for several years. Wilson was a Quaker merchant and president of the Leeds Anti-Slavery Association, and his wife Mary was the association’s librarian.
The Leeds Anti-Slavery Association was founded in 1853, admitting men and women as equal members. They learned from the inspirational lectures of African American abolitionists who visited the city, including William Wells Brown, Henry “Box” Brown, Ellen and William Craft, Frederick Douglass, Sarah Parker Remond and Moses Roper – who are named on the new plaque.
The plaque, commissioned by Leeds Civic Trust, commemorates the amazing story of Ellen and William Craft, who travelled north through the United States from Georgia to Boston to emancipate themselves from enslavement.
Former slaves Ellen and William Craft, who stayed with the Armisteads at another Leeds residence when they were lecturing in the city
Professor Bridget Bennett from the University’s School of English, whose research was instrumental in the campaign for the plaque, said: “Leeds should be better-known for its connection to the history of abolition and anti-slavery in the United States. The campaign for this plaque has been ongoing for many years, with the input of different people across the city. It’s an important example of how universities can work together with local organisations and communities to have real impact.”
Lyddon Hall was built in 1828 by the Boyne family and was originally named Virginia Cottage after the state where the tobacco that made their fortune was grown. Their wealth derived from the labour of enslaved people of African descent, who had no legal rights and were forced to work under appalling conditions. But just decades later in the 1860s the Armisteads, who were by that time living in the house, used it as a centre to collect goods and funds for newly emancipated people in the United States.
Despite pre-dating the University’s inception as the Yorkshire College of Science in 1874, the Armisteads have several connections to the campus. Works by Wilson, including records from the Yorkshire Quaker Archives, are held in the University Library’s Special Collections.
- https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/arts-humanities-cultures/news/article/2768/faculty-of-arts-humanities-and-cultures-celebrates-black-history-month
